Copious Notes

Six veteran Lexington musical theater performers team up with director Stephen Currens for Beguiled Again, a musical revue of the songs of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. It plays Sept. 24-Oct. 4 at the Downtown Arts Center. We caught up with the cast at a rehearsal Sept. 22. The lights and set weren’t quite together, but we got a good idea what it’s going to look like.

Adam Luckey will star in "This Wonderful Life," a one-man version of "This Wonderful Life." Photo by Mark Cornelison | LexGo.

Actors Guild of Lexington has announced a five-show schedule for the 2009-10 season. It’s a lineup that will import a couple of familiar directors and give one of Lexington’s leading actors the stage all to himself at Christmastime.

• Beguiled Again: The Songs of Rodgers and Hart, music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Lorenz Hart; music arrangements by Craig D. Ames; conceived by J. Barry Lewis, Lynnette Barkley, and Craig D. Ames — Peggy Taphorn of Temple Theatre in Sanford, N.C., who directed Quilters and My Way for AGL, returns for a program of tunes by the Broadway duo including Blue Moon and My Funny Valentine. Sept. 10-27.
• The Vertical Hour by David Hare — Actors Guild artistic director Richard St. Peter directs this play about the meeting of two people with divergent views of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The Broadway production was directed by Sam Mendes and starred Julianne Moore and Bill Nighy. Oct. 15-Nov. 1.
• This Wonderful Life, by Steve Murray, conceived by Mark Setlock — Adam Luckey will star in this one-man show in which he plays all the characters from the Frank Capra classic It’s a Wonderful Life. Bob Singleton directs. Dec. 3-20.
  
• The New Century by Paul Rudnick — Bo List returns from Memphis to direct this fast-paced comedy from the writer of I Hate Hamlet. The characters include a wealthy Jewish matron, a flamboyant public access TV host and a Midwestern scrapbooker/competitive cake decorator. Feb. 11-28.
• What the Butler Saw by Joe Orton — AGL associate artistic director Eric Ryan Seale directs this risque, door-slamming comedy about a psychiatrist who tries to seduce his secretary. Somehow, Winston Churchill gets involved.  March 25-April 11.

For the coming season, the shows will run for three weekends on a Thursday through Sunday schedule at the Downtown Arts Center. The past several years, the theatre had been going on four-week runs Friday through Sundays.